Transparency News 10/29/14
State and Local Stories
Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim told fellow council members Tuesday that he arranged a flight to Baltimore for a city trip through Bart Frye, a political contributor and the developer of the city’s East Beach neighborhood. Fraim continued to say he paid a regulated rate for the flight. Several council members said that no matter how Fraim travels, they want him to do a better job of updating them on important projects. Fraim said he would have told any member of council how he got the plane if they had asked. He didn’t disclose Frye’s name publicly last week, he said, to keep him out of news coverage. Fraim paid the $1,392.90 cost for the flight. Taxpayers didn’t foot the bill, but by paying himself, there was no public record of the trip. The situation didn’t sit well with Councilman Andy Protogyrou, who said the council was first briefed about Waterside after the trip during a closed session on Sept. 9. “I don’t care if you all strapped on wings and flapped your hands,” Protogyrou said. “I want to know what happened.”
Virginian-Pilot
The right to speak anonymously on the Internet will be compromised if a carpet cleaner succeeds in unmasking the identities of critics who posted negative reviews online, a lawyer for the Yelp Inc. business review website told the Virginia Supreme Court on Tuesday. In a closely watched Internet free-speech case, a judge held Yelp in contempt for failing to comply with Hadeed Carpet Cleaning's subpoena for identifying information about seven reviewers. San Francisco-based Yelp appealed, arguing that the ruling violates its users' First Amendment rights. The justices are expected to rule in January.
Fox Business
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit heard oral arguments in the Pittsylvania County public prayer case Tuesday, and focused most of their questions on whether the county had filed an appeal on time. University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said when a court again hears the prayer argument, it will focus on whether the Greece case sets enough of a precedent to be taken into consideration. “The county is arguing that this case is similar to Greece and the plaintiffs are trying to distinguish it,” Tobias said in an email.
Register & Bee
Some Shenandoah County leaders and their attorney sparred Tuesday over "leaked" legal advice and the fate of a volunteer fire station. County Attorney J. Jay Litten made comments at the Board of Supervisors meeting refuting that he and Department of Fire and Rescue Chief Gary Yew talked about dissolving the Toms Brook Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department. Litten called the claims in an article published in a local newspaper "absurd." "There was no such discussion," Litten said. "To my knowledge dissolution was not being discussed or thought about by anyone." The article had cited information from an email correspondence between Litten and supervisors. Litten said he could not comment further on the "leaked" information because of the attorney-client privilege. Litten warned that the leaking of information in the future could come back to haunt the board and the county. Neither Litten nor County Administrator Mary Beth Price would provide copies of the email in question to the media, citing that the message contains privileged information.
Northern Virginia Daily
For some members of the new governor-appointed ethics commission, perhaps their greatest challenge could be themselves. Members of the Commission to Ensure Integrity and Public Confidence in State Government, appointed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, made it clear in their first meeting this week they want to live up to their title. It’s a task perhaps as difficult as the commission’s name is long.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
James City County Supervisor John McGlennon said relationships among board members are strained in the aftermath of news that several members had received a “highly confidential” email from a private developer to build a new middle school. McGlennon, in an interview with the Gazette, said the revelation that developer Chris Henderson had emailed three members of the Board about a potential proposal to build an alternative site middle school, had created “a circumstance where it’s difficult.” “There has to be a certain level of trust on any board,” McGlennon added, saying he felt excluded by not being notified by other members of the Board of Supervisors about the proposa,l and said he felt any chance of the middle school plan advancing faced “a big obstacle” because of the way it was introduced. “Comments attributed to supervisors McGlennon and Kennedy concerning my involvement as some sort of backroom deal are patently false and detract from the real issue of solving capacity problems in our middle schools,” Henderson said. “The PPEA process encourages innovation and competition, not collusion and cronyism.” “If there are any questions about this kind of proposal, the real question is why wasn’t the information shared by him more broadly,” McGlennon said in response, at Tuesday’s meeting.
Virginia Gazette
National Stories
When the executives who distribute 5-Hour Energy, the popular caffeinated drinks, learned that attorneys general in more than 30 states were investigating allegations of deceptive advertising — a serious financial threat to the company — they moved quickly to shut the investigations down, one state at a time. But success did not come in court or at a negotiating table. Instead, it came at the opulent Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in California, with its panoramic ocean views, where more than a dozen state attorneys general had gathered last year for cocktails, dinners and fund-raisers organized by the Democratic Attorneys General Association. A lawyer for 5-Hour Energy roamed the event, setting her sights on Attorney General Chris Koster of Missouri, whose office was one of those investigating the company. “My client just received notification that Missouri is on this,” the lawyer, Lori Kalani, told him. Ms. Kalani’s firm, Dickstein Shapiro, had courted the attorney general at dinners and conferences and with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Mr. Koster told Ms. Kalani that he was unaware of the investigation, and he reached for his phone and called his office. By the end of the weekend, he had ordered his staff to pull out of the inquiry, a clear victory for 5-Hour Energy.New York Times
Do you know where your student is? At school? On the bus? Paying for lunch in the cafeteria? Principals in thousands of the nation’s schools know the answer because radio frequency chips are embedded in students’ ID cards, or their schools are equipped with biometric scanners that can identify portions of a student’s fingerprint, the iris of an eye or a vein in a palm. Such technologies have become increasingly common in schools, which use them to take attendance, alert parents where their children get off the school bus or speed up lunch lines. But those tools, which are supposed to make schools safer and more efficient, have become a flashpoint for controversy. Several states are now banning or restricting the use of the technology in schools, as worries over student privacy have risen amid breaches of government and commercial computer databases.
Governing
A White House computer network was hit by hackers, resulting in a series of outages and connectivity issues, a White House official said Tuesday. The official, who asked not to be named discussing the security issues, would not comment on who was believed to be behind the attack. Russian hackers were suspected, the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed sources. The breach affected the unclassified network used by employees of the executive office of the president. The official said it did not damage any computers or systems. Officials were still investigating and reinforcing the network.
Los Angeles Times
The FBI in Seattle created a fake news story on a bogus Seattle Times web page to plant software in the computer of a suspect in a series of bomb threats to Lacey’s Timberline High School in 2007, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco. The EFF documents reveal that the FBI dummied up a story with an Associated Press byline about the Thurston County bomb threats with an email link “in the style of The Seattle Times,” including details about subscriber and advertiser information.
Seattle Times
Editorials/Columns
Dick Hammerstrom, Free Lance-Star
Beginning in 2016, elections for Hampton school board will be at-large, now that council members voted to eliminate the ward system. City officials last week also approved a request that Hampton's charter be charged to prohibit current council members from seeking election as mayor. If you missed the public discussion about those measures, you're not alone. The council scheduled two public forums on the proposals reluctantly and held only cursory debate before voting on them. Any change to the election process — especially significant ones such as these — should seek to improve on what we do now. They should encourage participation and bring more candidates into the fold. And they should be developed as a byproduct of extensive public debate that draws ideas broadly from the population.
Daily Press
A lost reputation is one of the most difficult of treasures to retrieve. Virginia has trashed its reputation a state where a higher standard prevails, directly descended from the cherished ideals of the Founders. Part of the challenge is simply inherent to the problem itself. Once they are betrayed, people find it tough to trust again — whether in politics or in personal relationships. A second problem is that not all decision-makers may be supportive of the necessary reforms. Reforms could cost the politically powerful some of their strength. Lawmakers will be asked to put the public good ahead of their own advancement. But if they were fully capable of doing that, as a group and — in some cases — as individuals, the problem wouldn’t exist in the first place. No painful reforms would be necessary.
Daily Progress
To whom are elected leaders ultimately responsible: the parties that nominated them or the voters who elected them? In the world of Bedford County politics, there always seems to be more questions than answers. At issue is a vote by the Republican Party of Bedford to censure three members of the Board of Supervisors for passing a tax increase without explaining their vote to the party faithful. Are the supervisors accountable only to the Republicans or do the other residents of Bedford County come into play in this issue? More questions, as usual.
News & Advance
